Until now, it seems. And at least partly due to Hardy’s on-the-field play, which has never been questioned before, aside from weighing it against the headaches he causes off the field.

In the Saturday interview, Jones indicated he had misjudged how Hardy’s lull from playing would affect him. Hardy had played just one game in 2014 after he was placed on the commissioner’s exempt list following a domestic-violence arrest. In 2015, he was suspended the first four games, returning to put up six sacks and 23 tackles in 12 games — much of the numbers accumulated when the hopeless 4-12 Cowboys had already fallen out of the playoff race.

“Even though you are a great God-gifted player or an accomplished player, you just lose something that you got to get back to when you are laid off,” Jones said of the 27-year-old. “I think that we all underestimated the effect of his layoff from playing. I’m not going to get into — obviously [his] off-the-field issues would have impacted anybody breathing. I think that was impactful. And then the fact that we weren’t winning.”